OEE monitoring enables real-time production process analysis
OEE monitoring concentrates on three primary factors for overall improvement – availability, performance and quality.
Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) insights
- Improving OEE by even 5% boosts productivity by addressing availability, performance and quality through precise, comprehensive data collection.
- Integrating OEE data with ISO 50001 enhances energy efficiency, aligning production improvements with sustainability goals for competitive and operational advantages.
Measuring, analyzing and enhancing the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) of an operation can yield significant benefits. Calculating this value and determining the underlying causes of any loss can provide valuable insights into areas needing improvement. Even a modest OEE increase of around 5% can improve productivity. OEE concentrates on three primary factors for overall improvement – availability, performance and quality.
Availability, performance and quality are integral to calculating OEE. Availability accounts for any loss of production time due to events like unplanned stops, for instance, equipment failures or material shortages. This also covers planned stops such as changeover times or scheduled maintenance.
Performance loss includes anything that may cause the process to run slower than maximum speed. This could include issues such as machine wear, substandard materials, misfeeds and jams.
Quality losses address also any defective parts or products that need to be reworked or scrapped. These three factors are used to calculate a percentage as follows:
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OEE [%] = Availability [%] x Performance [%] x Quality rate [%] / 10000
To ensure an accurate OEE percentage, collecting comprehensive and precise operational data from the plant floor is essential.
Besides information on the key OEE factors, a detailed analysis of the potential causes and areas for improvement is also necessary. This requires the collection and analysis of both real-time and historical data.
Real-time data allows for rapid identification of issues that may reduce measured effectiveness and can enable quicker improvements or adjustments. Evaluating historical data helps operators note any trends that may impact OEE and provides a holistic overview of production shifts, recurring issues, or other factors that may offer opportunities for improvement.
This enables management to prioritize actions oriented towards effectiveness, which can also translate into cost savings by reducing wastage, downtime and inefficiencies.
Monitoring OEE progress with software
One way to monitor and increase OEE is using software that can manage all three core factors. The right software will offer communication protocols and networking technologies to connect with plant equipment and software for an overview of all activity.
This can help to improve availability through several strategies. Its integrated features can optimize equipment changeover times and increase human-machine interface (HMI) availability as well as documenting cleaning procedures to optimize time usage.
Along with the efficiency, productivity and financial gains possible from increasing OEE, adopting a software-based approach can also help businesses meet sustainability goals.
OEE data can also be integrated with ISO 50001. This standard was created to help organizations continuously improve their energy efficiency, save costs and reduce emissions. By combining OEE data with energy consumption data, operators can gain real-time insight into the relationship between their production and energy usage, allowing them to take corrective action to improve both in tandem.
In a connected industry landscape, manufacturing businesses adopting a data-driven approach stand to gain a competitive advantage. Monitoring and increasing OEE is a powerful tool for operational optimization. Plants that use software to track and increase OEE can improve their productivity, quality and performance for a smarter, greener, and more efficient operation.
– This originally appeared on Control Engineering Europe.
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